


Double O 'Moggie & Antirrhinums' Babysitter

by AsheTarasovich (natalieashe), Boffin1710, natalieashe



Series: Secret Garden [2]
Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: Alec has Seeds, Alternate Universe, Coffee, Commitment, Domestic Fluff, Gardens & Gardening, Home, Kissing, M/M, No James in This Story, Q Has a Cat, Tea, Tickling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-25
Updated: 2015-03-25
Packaged: 2018-03-19 15:30:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3615015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/natalieashe/pseuds/AsheTarasovich, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Boffin1710/pseuds/Boffin1710, https://archiveofourown.org/users/natalieashe/pseuds/natalieashe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A Double O needs something to fill his idle time if he isn't causing mischief.  Beyond Q's kitchen door Alec finds something to keep him occupied.  After a small panic on Q's part both agree on a mutually beneficial arrangement. Maybe they aren't so commitment-phobic after all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Double O 'Moggie & Antirrhinums' Babysitter

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Boffin1710](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Boffin1710/gifts).



> I don't write fluff often. This week I needed fluff.
> 
> For my good friend who detests fluff as much as I do. I suppose they can't be horrid all the time :-)

Alec dusted off his hands and scrubbed them on the thighs of his jeans. He stashed the bag and tools in the wooden garden tidy and looked around the small yard with satisfaction. Tidy, ordered. Established. The trellis needed to be repaired and the paving could do with weeding, but aside from himself, who would care? Certainly not the guy in the top flat who never opened his curtains when he was home, or the girl on the second floor who worked permanent nights. He tamped down the compost in the seed tray with a delicate fingertip and with a final wipe of his fingers on his shirt he sat down on the stone bench.

His coffee had cooled to perfect drinking temperature. He cradled the mug and looked around the small space. At this time of year it only managed a couple of hours of sun before it dipped behind the townhouses again but it was a perfect peaceful spot filled with green in the city.

He caught movement and looked up to find Q watching him from the doorway, hair sleep mussed and dressed only in pyjama pants and a washed out Doctor Who t-shirt. 

“I thought you were still sleeping. Didn’t want to disturb you.”

“It's almost eleven” Q grumped, sipping from his own scalding hot mug.

“True, but you didn’t get in until well after three.”

“I was surprised to find you here. Thought you’d be crashing at James’ place again, or is his sofa losing its appeal?” Q shuffled out into the yard, wincing as the cold concrete chilled his bare toes. “It was a pleasant surprise, by the way. Just in case you were in any doubt?”

Alec smiled and held out his hand, setting his mug on the stone bench beside him. He drew the younger man between his legs and tugged him down to perch his bony bum on one sturdy muscular thigh. “Good. I’d hate to think I ever outstayed my welcome.” He played a gentle tug-of-war trying to get Q to relinquish his mug, finally allowing the man to take a much needed sip before he took it away from him.

“You like to live dangerously, coming between me and my first mug of the day” Q said fondly, pressing his tea-heated lips to Alec’s cooler ones. Alec hummed and opened for him, welcoming the slide of Q’s tongue over his lower lip. He tasted of bergamot and the cigarettes he claimed he never stole from Alec’s pack.

“Double O” Alec chuckled “Not known for our timidity. Not even when faced with grumpy Quartermasters who should be catching up on their sleep.”

Q made a childlike grabby-hand gesture and Alec returned his mug. He knew when to push his luck and when not, and this was… Nice. The inanity of the word didn’t begin to describe Alec’s contentment at being right where he was in that moment. Anything more effusive just wasn’t really him. And it certainly wasn’t Q. In some ways he wished it was.

Q scanned the green things and the dirt and the general outside-ness of the yard and shuddered. “There is fresh air out here” like the idea was offensive to him.

“You love fresh air. You make us sleep with the window wide open even in the depths of winter. One day I’ll lose my bollocks to frostbite, and then you’ll be sorry.”

“You’re bloody Russian. The depths of a London winter wouldn’t even make you put on a vest. And yes, I do like fresh air. In controlled amounts.” Q sipped his tea frowning over the rim of his cup.

“You’re ridiculous.” Alec kissed Q’s temple and slid his fingers beneath the hem of the ratty t-shirt. His large hand splayed across Q’s soft stomach. “I love that this is so squishy.”

“We can’t all have abs of steel” Q huffed. “Some of us are dedicated to achieving perfection of the mind, not sculpting our bodies into some kind of impossible ideal.”

“Oh, so I’m the ideal, am I?” Alec laughed, squidging his calloused fingers into Q’s gorgeously soft middle. He cheekily hooked his fingers into the waistband of Q’s pyjama pants and slid his hand to the warmth of Q’s lower abdomen, dipping a fingertip into his navel.

“You’re not bad I suppose” Q said loftily, collapsing into insane giggles as Alec wriggled his fingertips into a particular ticklish spot they’d discovered a few weeks earlier. “Stop, stop” Q begged, trying not to throw the remainder of his tea over the pair of them. 

When his giggles subsided he jumped up. Alec let him go reluctantly but cheered up when Q took both cups to refill. He returned immediately with Alec’s coffee and then ambled back to the kitchen to wait for his tea to brew. While he waited he leaned in the doorway fiddling with his phone.

“You look sickeningly happy” Q commented. 

“I am.” Alec grinned and Q captured the moment with a snap of his phone, smiling gently as he set it as his wallpaper. He waved the phone at Alec to show him.

“Cute. Sickly, but cute.”

“What are you doing out here anyway?” Q finally returned with his tea and settled in Alec’s lap once more.

“Making the garden presentable. I imagine it’s in your lease that you’re at supposed to attempt to keep the place under control. You are the garden flat after all.”

Q snorted “Hardly a garden. Lacks the personality for that. Moss and cement, weeds and gloom. I took the flat for the interior space, not the greenery. I don’t think I’ve ventured out here more than three times in the entire year I’ve lived here.” He sniffed and wrinkled his nose. “Smells of damp leaves.” Q pulled back and looked at Alec squarely. “You’re an agent with a license to kill and you’re gardening?”

“Never met a plant yet that deserved to be terminated.” Alec fingered the blade-like leaves of the plant in the pot on the bench beside them. “Surprisingly therapeutic, working with your hands. I don’t feel like I’m constantly under threat here. Years ago…” He looked lost for a moment and sighed deeply. “Doesn’t matter” he finished.

Q touched Alec’s jaw, dropping a light kiss to his cheek. The life of a Double O was like that, always on the alert to danger and deception. A bit of downtime was well-deserved if Alec could find it even if it was a puzzle to Q. “Tell me” he said softly.

“Years ago, when I was just a small boy, I would visit my grandfather. He loved his plants. Tended them, talked to them…” He gave an embarrassed laugh “Don’t worry, I’m not out here chatting up the ivy. But I always thought that one day, when I was settled, I would try to learn a bit. All this has survived without your tender loving care for so long, I figured it’s a fairly hardy classroom.”

Q hummed, looking around with distaste. He assumed if plants were still green, they were alive, but other than that… “I seem to remember all of this being here when I moved in, but what’s that?” He pointed at the plastic tray full of dirt sitting by Alec’s left hip.

“An experiment. Trying to grow some colour to brighten the place up once we get more sunshine in the day.”

“You’re planting seeds? But they’ll need looking after. You could be called away at any time and if you aren’t here for them they’ll die. They’ll dry out or get water logged or frostbitten or eaten by slugs” Q panicked, glaring at the offending box of compost, and then at his lover. 

Alec laughed and slid his hand across Q’s belly once more, thumb circling soothingly over his warm skin. “Relax. We’ll put them on the kitchen windowsill. All they’ll need is a bit of water from time to time. How hard can it be for you to manage that, if I’m called away?”

“But it’s a responsibility! I might kill them” he stressed.

Alec laughed even harder, hugging the young boffin to him and burying his nose into Q’s untidy hair. “For god’s sake Q, it’s a tray of antirrhinums, not my first-born. If they die, they die. For a few pence I can try again. You trust me to feed your cat, I think I can entrust some flowers to you.”

“It’s a commitment” Q grumbled, barely placated. “Might as well give me a bloody ring and be done with it!”

“You said you’d kill me if I ever proposed Q. You said I’d die a horrible painful death” Alec chuckled “You’re such a charming little commitment-phobe.”

“Oh pardon me if I’m a little wary of marrying a man who does his best to get himself maimed or killed with every job he does. I’m rubbish at choosing funeral music.” Q looked at him slyly “though in your case ‘Light My Fire’ might be appropriate… maybe ‘Burn, Baby, Burn’…” He shrieked as Alec’s fingers dug into his hip again. Alec managed to save his mug before it went crashing to the concrete, placing it by his own on the bench., then he was kissing him, laughing into Q’s mouth as his fingers wriggled against the ticklish spot. Q pushed away panting and grinning, slapping Alec’s arm. “You’re such a shit, why do I like you?”

“Because I refuse to marry you but I can still trap you with the care of baby plants?” Alec nuzzled into his neck, burying under the mad fluffy bits that stuck out in uncontrollable tufts. His other hand crept up the back of Q’s shirt, sliding over the knobs of Q’s spine until his fingers encountered the jut of his shoulder blade. How could he possibly tell this skinny man-child that this flat was starting to feel like a place he could call home? That he was tired of moving on from hotel to hotel, with frequent stints on Bond’s sofa or Eve’s spare room. So many long term missions made a long term base pointless, but just occasionally…

“Maybe you should move in permanently? Be my live-in gardener” Q’s tone was light but the question hung between them, almost tangible. “I mean, you’re here a lot… have your own key… Would just be more convenient for you when you need to fiddle with your ficus.”

Alec’s laugh vibrated down the length of Q’s arm, pressed against the agent’s chest as it was. “You have no idea what a ficus is, do you?”

“Not a clue” Q admitted, nervously awaiting Alec’s answer to his oblique question “but you could show me.” Q was tired of being alone. Tired of isolated hours conversing with Amelie, who, affectionate though she was, lacked even the most basic of conversational skills. The tuxedo cat curled in a pool of warm sunshine and regarded the pair on the bench like she would love to give them a good scolding.

“Is there enough garden to warrant a live-in?” Alec teased cautiously. A home meant more than somewhere to lay his head. It meant space of his own and warm arms to welcome him home from whatever godforsaken hell-hole he’d spent four months trying to destroy before it broke him.

“You can babysit the cat as well as the anti-wotsits?” Q said hopefully, leaning against Alec’s chest. He wanted this next step. No ring, but shared parental responsibility for a bad tempered moggie and a garden flat with flowers. Someone to come home to. Someone to hold him on the nights everything went to hell and he had to report the loss of another agent. Someone who understood.

“Antirrhinums. Snapdragons.” Alec nudged him to get up, rising with him and curling an arm around his waist to pull him in close. He rested his chin on Q’s head and together they looked around the small yard. “I have plans for this place” Alec said softly. And for us too, he added silently.


End file.
